Why the tiger, not the lion, is king of the jungle

Lions may face a challenge to the species' long reign as king of
the jungle, after scientists from Oxford University found that
tigers have the bigger brains.

By measuring the skull size and volume of a large sample of
tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars, they found that the tiger has
a bigger brain than its big-cat cousins.

"When we compare the two biggest species, on average the lion
has a bigger skull than the tiger based on the greatest length of
the skull," said Dr Nobby Yamaguchi, of Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research
Unit. "However, the tiger has bigger cranial volume than the
lion. It is truly amazing that tiny female Balinese tiger skulls
have cranial volumes as large as those of huge male southern
African lion skulls."

The tiger's brain is, on average, 16 per cent larger than the
lions.

It had previously been assumed that social species such as lions
would have larger brains than solitary species like tigers, to cope
with the demands of a complex social hierarchy, according to Science Daily.

Yamaguchi said: "Our results strongly suggest that there is no
detectable positive relationship between relative brain size and
sociality amongst these four big cat species, which shared a common
ancestor around 3.7 million years ago."

The researchers are now planning to investigate what caused the
variation in brain size among big cats.

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Comments

@stephen "The Jungle" actually refers to Africa, going back to the origin of the phrase anyway. The fail to be found here is that there are no tigers in Africa.

Leo X Daniels

Sep 16th 2009

@ Leo X, The word 'Jungle' has nothing to do with Africa. The word originates from the Sanskrit word 'jangala'. Sankrit is a language originating in India. Lions once inhabited much of India, but now only some 300 populate a small area in Gujarat. Some wildlife authorities (Kenneth Anderson, Kesri Singh, Richard Perry, Robin David et al.) Point the finger at the tiger for driving the lion out of India.

Brains

Sep 20th 2009

@LeoBigger brains normally mean smarter animal. A smarter animal who is also bigger, faster, stronger and agile should be the King of the beast. Survival of the fittest. Most fights can be won by using your brain. Hence the saying 'fight smart and you won't have to fight too hard'